Daily Inspiration Quote by Martin Luther

Faith, for Luther, is less a warm feeling than a hostile takeover. The verb choice in "permitting ourselves to be seized" makes belief sound like surrender: not the mind congratulating itself for being reasonable, but the self consenting to be grabbed by something it cannot control. That framing is doing polemical work. It rejects the late-medieval spiritual economy in which the believer labors toward certainty through rituals, merits, and the visible machinery of the Church. Luther’s Reformation insists on a different axis: justification by faith, not by works, and a God who remains fundamentally hidden even while promising salvation.

The subtext is a quiet critique of religious "proof". "The things we do not see" doesn’t merely mean the afterlife; it points to the entire problem Luther called the hiddenness of God. You don’t get God as an object you can examine. You get a promise you can trust, or you don’t. And the trust Luther wants is not naive. It’s closer to wagered dependence: the believer chooses to be acted upon, because the usual tools of verification fail.

Context sharpens the stakes. Luther is a professor trained in Scripture and argument, yet he frames faith as consent rather than conclusion. That tension is the point: theology here is not a ladder to mastery; it is a discipline that drives you to the edge of what reason can certify, then dares you to stop pretending you’re in charge. In an age of indulgences and religious performance, Luther’s line is a provocation: the only "work" faith does is letting go.